Manchester City's Improbable Win; The Floptastic NBA Playoffs

Today in sports: People are still talking about Manchester City's improbably EPL title, Donovan McNabb has lost weight, corrected his form, and wants one more shot, and David Stern acknowledges flopping is marring the NBA playoffs..

People are still talking about how Manchester City won the English Premiere League title over the weekend, scoring two goals in stoppage time to edge out the Queens Park Rangers by a score of 3-2. Sweet fancy Moses, it was amazing, the first Champions League title for Man City since 1968. Forty-four shots thus ended 44 years of longing for the unattainable prize in the city of Manchester," wrote Rob Hughes in his gamer for TheNew York Times. "The fans who never deserted them, even when the club fell into the third tier of English soccer, are the salt of the earth.They are born to follow a team. The players, and owners, are just passing through." [The New York Times]

Former franchise quarterback Donovan McNabb says he's dropped "15, 20 pounds" from his hefty, Sydney Greenstreet-esque frame and wants someone to sign him to preserve the myth he was ever a Hall of Fame caliber quarterback. He also says he's been working with a personal quarterback coach -- the well-respected Goerge Whitfield, who helped prepare Andrew Luck and Cam Newton for the draft process -- and that together they've fixed McNabb's habit of "over-rotating" on throws, whatever that means. Proving again that aging quarterbacks can't be choosers, McNabb declared, when asked what teams he would consider joining, "I have a full list. A full list of 32." [PFT]

A judge has tossed a defamation lawsuit against Syracuse men's basketball coach Jim Boeheim, regarding comments he made about the sexual abuse allegations two former ballboys made against former Syracuse assistant coach Bernie Fine. (Specifically, Boeheim accused Bobby Davis of telling "a bunch of a thousand lies" and just wanted to cash-in on the scandal involving former Penn Sate defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.) Boeheim repeatedly apologized for the comments in the week following Fine's firing. [ESPN]

Dale Hunter will not return next year to coach the Washington Capitals next year, because he wants to spend more time with his family in Canada. Hunter -- whose jersey hangs from the rafters of the Verizon Center -- was brought in November to replace the fired Bruce Boudreau and installed a semi-unwatchable but effective defense-oriented system that had the highly-touted Caps within a game of making the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since tail-end of the Clinton administration. [The Washington Post]

NBA commissioner David Stern has kindly but semi-pointlessly come out and declared flopping -- the act by which someone who wasn't fouled pretends he was, usually by falling to the ground and flailing around -- to be a "legitimate concern" to the integrity of the league. Stern scolded ESPN's Michelle Vogel for suggesting that the Miami Heat are the league's preeminent flop artists, possibly because he knows that distinction really belongs to the Los Angeles Clippers. [ESPN]

Speaking of the Miami Heat: forward Chris Bosh is "out indefinitely" with an abdominal strain. On the surface, that wouldn't seem to matter -- Bosh has shown himself to be the least essential of Miami's so-called "Big Three" and has frequently been absent, because of the birth of his child and whatnot -- but SI.com NBA analyst Zach Lowe argues the loss could be huge during Miami's decond-round matchup against the Indiana Pacers, since the Pacers "are very good, and they understand how to attack Miami" and without Bosh, the Heat don't have a big man capable of sinking a 12-foot jump shot on a consistent basis. So we shall see. [SI.com]